The 2024 Movie Monster State of the Union

As the year comes to a close, I thought it would be an interesting exercise to provide a sort of state of the union on the year’s movie monsters: a quick analysis of what is still considered terrifying. However, upon reflection, what was conceived as a 21st century bestiary began to look less like a Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual and more like the aisles of my local Walmart. As the old world dies and the new struggles to be born, it seems the monsters of 2024 may represent the same fears, but have taken on a more mundane tone. Since I’m not sure what to do with this information, io9’s Monster Magazine 2024 is submitted for approval.

the familiar

In a year that saw the re-election of a former president, an ongoing war in the Middle East, an escalation of nuclear brinkmanship and the return of bird flu, 2024 brought with it a grim sense of repetition. The feeling that we’re going to duplicate exactly what we tried before, only more, with an entire trilogy of material in mind, so it’s bound to pay off like never before, right?

It is no coincidence, then, that in the current year there have been new variations of A quiet place, Foreign, The Omen, Rosemary’s Baby, Beetlejuice, Ghostbusters, Godzilla, Hellboy, Salem’s Lot, The Raven, The Strangers-even witch boardwhich we haven’t heard from since a direct-to-video sequel in 1995.

Currently, there seems to be no end in sight for the return of recognizable IPs from yesteryear, with new Saw, Conjuring, Insidious, Fear Street, I Know What You Did Last Summerand final destination Movies scheduled for release next year. Not to mention 28 years lateranother piece of nostalgia that features a trailer that is on track to become the most viewed horror trailer of all time.

As we head into 2025, this “you know” attitude will extend to Universal once again doubling down on its stable of classic monsters, swapping out the company’s previous attempt at a shared cinematic universe for custom versions. Frankenstein, the bride of Frankenstein, the werewolf, and the mummy from none other than the likes of Guillermo del Toro, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Leigh Whannell and Lee Cronin, respectively.

Today even sees the launch of a new Nosferatureplete with a marketing campaign hoping to turn its cozy gothic decorations into a new Christmas tradition. It’s interesting then that movie audiences have largely rejected vampires, with an emphasis on this vampire, in particular, the last few years with films like Abigail, Renfield, and The last voyage of Demeter without achieving a great impact either in culture or at the box office.

The distinctive features of Dracula I Nosferatu—feeding on the blood of others, isolating oneself, but maintaining enormous wealth and influence over others—are good things fully supported by the culture. The kids call it “sigma.”

What feels particularly new about this current trend of sticking to what we know, however, is the sudden reverence we’ve developed toward the humble slasher genre, formally considered the bottom of the horror barrel. While yesterday’s cultural detritus becoming tomorrow’s critical darlings is nothing new (recent Best Picture winners have included stories about a fish man who falls in love with a human woman; a universe where people evolved products of pork instead of phalanxes; and a socially minded take on the ABC movie of the week, Bad Ronald), nothing that has reached this level of cultural importance has focused so much on the gory effects. The two and a half hours terrifying The films have more in common with the films of Herschell Gordon Lewis than those of Dario Argento. In a violent nature, that reinvented a movie like friday the 13th either Crazy from the perspective of its undead killer, it added an experimental touch to the genre’s classically simple narrative, emphasizing the thin wall that differentiates films like these from the French New Wave that are really just occasional splashes of blood.

Although the pressure on the limits terrifying The franchise may seem like a litmus test for human empathy, it should be noted that people legitimately like Art the Clown and his unrated Harpo Marx and Freddy Krueger routine. Anything too subversive might not find this audience. That’s why I’m legitimately intrigued by a movie that didn’t come out this year: Macon Blair’s remake of The toxic avenger. Something about a politically motivated judge, jury and executioner of big business assets was deemed too radioactive to reveal. I wonder why…

Media

Convergent with the continuing popularity of the slasher film has been the taboo-busting approach of having them star in child characters that have recently entered the public domain. In the last year, new slashers have been announced starring Winnie the Pooh, Peter Pan, Bambi, Popeye, Steamboat Willie, Pinocchio, Sleeping Beauty, the Little Mermaid and the Mad Hatter. Something about transposing characters intended to attract as much revenue as possible into the realm of bloodthirsty killers feels “right” in a way that’s both timely and inevitable, not to mention punk rock. Once a PI falls into the hands of the people, isn’t the only moral thing to do to become a monster? Especially if all roads lead to 2024, the consensus has to be that Mickey and company sold us a bill of goods the first time around.

Nowadays, you only need to lightly dust off YouTube to see an endless variety of video essays on darkness. Pokémon theories or an unusually scary PlayStation 2 game starring Piglet. In these circles, a lost Cartoon Network bumper or an unproduced episode of spongebob It is spoken of with the same silent reverence as unexploded nuclear munitions. When everything is available online, something that isn’t, no matter how innocuous, suddenly becomes suspicious and arcane. If we told children scary stories so that they would not venture into the In Woods alone, lost media hunters must at least dissuade each other from sharing their credit card information with seedy collectors on the dark web.

Recent movies like I saw the television shine understand the kind of fanatical devotion that can come with investing too much of oneself in children’s media, the kind that people used to describe as “Lovecraftian” but now goes by terms like “adult Disney.” For a generation where Cthulhu has been available as a stuffed animal all their lives, the Old Ones might as well have been Garfield and his friends, all along. Smile 2 is another film from last year that understands this, following in the footsteps of films like the ring and Go onwhere curses spread like transmissible memes that move like viruses, and even our celebrities are not immune.

As of 2024, “cosmic” horror is strictly earthly, and while the beliefs of its media-savvy cultists may seem silly to you, there is no need to believe in the destructive powers of their particular fandom as long as they do.

Technology

The past year has also seen a number of films monstrosizing AI and cutting-edge technology: films like Subordination and Scaredin which machines meant to improve our quality of life are personally invited into the home, like vampires, only to reveal some unsavory appetites of their own.

However, as terrified as we are of robots taking our jobs, we have also paradoxically collectively lost faith in the concept of technological progress. We’ve had movies about homicidal robotic nannies, toys, smart homes, and personal assistants, but we’ve yet to reach that “singularity” where this burgeoning technology does anything scarier than being better at what you yourself have outrageously defined. be.

As our government continues to admit that our airspace is and always has been occupied by aircraft that defy physics beyond human comprehension, I am reminded of Jordan Peele’s 2022 article. Nowhich suggested that UFOs are secretly a species of insatiably hungry atmospheric beast that our zoologists have yet to recognize or catalogue. In some ways, it’s easier to believe. Which brings us to…

Life itself/Older people

Just as AI replaced us in the workforce, one of the most curious trends of the last year has been a series of monster movies centered, in one way or another, on doppelgängers. If a hitherto unknown biological entity as in Cuckooa demonic presence as in Never let it go and dad’s heador a representative of oneself voluntarily designed as in The substanceThe anxiety at the heart of these stories lies not in personally becoming a monster, but in being replaced by one and potentially missing out on the cool things a monster can do.

night bitcha recent film in which Amy Adams transforms into a dog as an expression of her repressed anger is posed as a net positive. The idea of ​​losing control has tremendous appeal lately. Like Demi Moore’s fear of irrelevance in The substancethe real fear is being left behind.

Speaking of which, if the year 2024 could be defined by a single persistent boogeyman, the title would have to be unanimously awarded to the seniors. movies like Heretic, Apartment 7A, and Alien: Romulushave presented to older people (if not to the openly late, as in the ghost of poor Ian Holm in Romulus) tormenting young people for a host of reasons, ranging from financial gain to simply proving that they are still relevant from the comfort of their own booby-trapped homes.

People often don’t see the distinction between mummies and zombies, but the difference between them is notable. Mummies differ from zombies in that a zombie is somewhat clinically dead, but somehow still behaves as if it were alive. A mummy is something that should be dead, but is somehow biologically is still alive, just as Kharis’s heart continues to beat under the tana leaves in Universal’s The mummy’s hand, The mummy’s tomb, The ghost of the mummy, and the The curse of the mummy.

With the release of Nosferatu Today, in Count Orlok we have a familiar, elderly, copyright-infringing ghoul from the dawn of cinema who simply refuses to go away. Indeed, the right man for the times.

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